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Site Launch: ServiceMaster of Kent County

April 12th, 2013 by Ted Bailey

Service Master In the Kent and Ionia counties of Michigan, when you want your home or office expertly cleaned or recovered from a disaster, you call ServiceMaster.

They’re your number one source for residential Duct Cleaning, Carpet Cleaning; and Upholstery Cleaning. They offer commercial maintenance on contract carpet cleaning and floor polishing for a wide range of contract commercial customers, including restaurants, commercial office suites, hotels, manufacturers and more. They are a leader in Grand Rapids for commercial and residential disaster restoration and recovery for water damage, including flood and sewage backups; for smoke and fire damage and for mold remediation.

When the local Servicemaster franchisee owner wanted their web presence cleaned up, they called the Imagination Factory. We sat down with them and developed an easy-to-manage, mobile responsive and SEO friendly site for them.

Visit ServiceMaster GR

A website is a website

June 2nd, 2012 by Ted Bailey

Wow, really? That takes me back to the 60’s when we also thought a horse was a horse.. unless, of course, that horse was the famous Mr. Ed.

I suppose that if all you’re looking for is a tax write-off and/or to get the marketing department to quit bellyaching about not having one, then perhaps a static website that looks like it is from the 90′s and drives little or no traffic and generates few, if any leads will do just fine for you. However, for the rest of you that are looking to invest in an asset that will not only build your brand, but gain you visibility, increase trust and ultimately generate more sales… then not all websites are created equal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Spring Cleaning & The Shoemaker’s Barefoot Child

April 25th, 2012 by Keldrick Brown

In the world of design and development, a small, agile team can often be an easily undervalued asset. A small, close-knit group can offer the ability to quickly respond to change in a way that large organizations lurch and fumble through, without unnecessary distortion added by chains of sales people, project managers, design leads, and so on.

I find that it keeps the daily routine interesting. While I get to wear a lot of hats (wireframing and planning, design, client tech support, ux design, front end development, client tech support, content tailoring, did I mention tech support already?), I also get the benefit of working with other talented professionals who both accent my own strengths and cover my weak points, without the overhead of a massive business behemoth to weigh down the process, or the uncertainty of freelancers and outsourcing. This allows us to provide a great set of services without having to bludgeon our clientele with large-agency sized bills. Clearly it has worked well, as we have been at it for quite some time now.

It was all sunshine and rainbows until we realized that we had all been so busy making great sites for our clients that our own site was running around barefoot… and for significantly longer than any of us would like to publicly admit.

As such, we have dedicated ourselves to actually giving this site a facelift. Preferably before the Mayan calendar runs out…

Let’s see where this goes.

Deja Vu & Repeat Customers

May 4th, 2008 by Ted Bailey

Now that you’ve made the decision to put your site online, you also should start thinking of just how you are going to get traffic to it. After all, having really great business cards and/or brochures won’t do you any good if you don’t get it into the hands of your prospect… your target audience. Likewise, having a great site will do little good if we 1) don’t know about it or 2) can’t get people to it. There are a number of strategies that may be employed to drive traffic to a site. Each, of course, has their own representative costs. Some of these strategies include: Read the rest of this entry »

Determining True Web Development Costs

February 22nd, 2008 by Ted Bailey

Determining True Web Development Costs
or
When is a Bargain not a Bargain?

It has been estimated that over 116 million people now surf the internet. With that large a target audience, more and more businesses are finding it increasingly important to have a web presence. Indications are that while 60% of small to medium in the U.S. are ‘connected’ to the internet (compared to only 15% back in 1995 when we first began designing websites), only 20-25% have a web site or presence. These businesses do one of three things:

Attempt to do it themselves (either through internal staff or a niece/nephew),
Use local school/college or internet service provider resources, or
Turn to design firms such as the Imagination Factory to develop their web site.

Regardless of which they go, the most prevalent questions that get asked are:

How much will it cost?
How long will it take?

The answer, unfortunately, is that it depends on many variables. Seemingly there appears to be no rosetta stone for pricing. As such, prospective clients attempting to make apple to apple comparisons amongst designers begin by asking hourly rates. Read the rest of this entry »